Safehouse
by control of chaos
Summary: First in the Safehouse arc. With both the Russian mafia and SCORPIA on his trail, he goes to a friend for help.
1. Chapter 1

_Safehouse_ is going to be a two-part series with a possible 'sequel' that I'm starting on. Within the next week, all three parts to it should be up. Please R&R! ~ SamayouTamashi

* * *

Swearing colorfully in at least seven different languages, Alex could hear the thugs reloading from somewhere behind him. He sped up the pace, clutching his shoulder tightly though he knew the Kevlar should be tight enough to staunch a lot of the bleeding. As he glanced back to see how far behind the shooters were, a lucky shot grazed his cheek. 'Nothing deep,' he mentally noted while recoiling away from the open street. 'Won't even scar if I'm lucky.'

Over all, he hadn't had the best of luck today. Before he had realized the danger, their sniper had nailed him in the shoulder. The bastard was a great shot, sending Alex crisscrossing the city to lose him and the rest of his team.

Sharply turning the corner he leapt up, ignoring the burning throb in his shoulder, to catch the thin ledge of a low balcony above him. Pulling himself over the metal guard rail and into his new vantage point, he pulled his Sig from the holster around his waist. Only recently, MI6 had allowed him to carry guns but only if they were unregistered and in no way connected him to them. Not bothering to aim, he shot the five men who had come in the alley only a moment behind him. He didn't bother to look either. All five shots had gone right between the eyes with the exception of the one who had been turned in an awkward direction. The bullet had gone through his heart.

A shuffle of feet was his only warning before a sharp jab to the side of one knee knocked him to the ground and the Sig tumbled from his hand. The gun clicked as the cold metal was pressed firmly to the side of his head. "And here I thought we were having fun," Alex said.

"None of your silly remarks can help you now," replied a man with an unbelievably thick Russian accent. "Goodbye, Rider."

"Rider was my father," he snorted under his breath as the razorblade previously imbedded by Smithers in the false base of his sneaker was suddenly fully sheathed in the Russian sniper's neck. "Call me Alex."

Standing up, but putting most of his weight on his uninjured leg, he retrieved his gun and limped from the dark alley to look at the street sign a block down the road. "Crawford, building 46, flat 93." Like a mantra, he repeated it over and over.

Ben had given him the address when he'd heard of the mission for a secondary safe house in case the first was exposed; he swore up and down that it was safer than anywhere else in the world. Knowing that Alex would be shipped off to Russia on a highly dangerous mission, he had told him that someone he personally knew would be there at all times awaiting his return.

* * *

Alex winced as he slipped in a puddle from the recent drizzle. The mission had gone badly from the very start. Their supposed leak in the mafia had betrayed him to his real bosses and since then, the spy had been doing his work from the street. Three weeks ago, he had carried out his purpose for being there: the assassination of their SCORPIA liaison. MI6, despite his call for assistance, had been unable to send back-up to retrieve him so far east.

So over these past three weeks, he'd made his back to England.

Even with the bullet embedded in his shoulder, he hesitated before entering the building. Two more were likely still after him, and those were only the ones he'd seen. Alex didn't want to leak Ben's location, but he didn't have a choice. The bullet wound could be problematic if left untreated for too long and he was tired from weeks of running with little to no sleep. Slowly, his resolve was breaking down.

With another look around, he took the narrow stairway up to the third floor and apartment 93. Cautiously, he limped to the doorway and firmly knocked three times. The Sig was gripped tightly in his hand as he clenched and relaxed his grip, always keeping his finger on the trigger. The door still hadn't opened and he knocked again before he heard someone stumble to open the door, muttering "I'm coming, I'm coming."

When the door was pulled open, he had the gun to the man's temple. "I need identification," Alex demanded, still worried that there was another leak or that he'd been beaten to the safe house. The guy was silent, likely from shock by the look on his face. "What the-"

"Identification, _please_," he stressed.

From behind the man at the door, another more familiar voice sleepily asked, "Alex? S'that you?"

He cautiously lowered the Sig and blinked. "Be-Fox?" he corrected, mentally thwacking himself.

"Yeah, come on in. Wolf, let him past." Alex blinked again as he realized that he hadn't recognized the SAS man. Wolf, just as dazed, stepped warily aside to let him in, realizing that he also felt a sense of recognition for the teenager.

Fox was stretching his weary limbs and shaking the sleep from his eyes. "Sorry about that, but we'd all gone to sleep. Long day." Yawning again, he looked more closely at the dirty and blood-splattered teenager just inside the entrance, who was examining the safe house. "How come every time I see you, you look like hell?"

"Uh, classified?"

"Hey, that's unfair. I'm MI6 too, remember? Now get comfortable. We'll be stationed here until Blunt gets whatever shit you've gotten into sorted out. Until then, just don't-uh—get any of that blood on the carpet. And don't mind Wolf here," he chuckled at the still-shocked SAS operative. "He's not a morning person before his first cup of coffee."

Poor Wolf was still trying to process what had just happened. "Cub?" he blurted out. "You're the 'high priority' MI6 agent?"

"Can we discuss this later?" he asked, thinking about re-holstering his gun, but deciding against it.

"Bandages!" Fox said. "There are some in the bathroom cabinet. You look like you could use some, but then you always do." Alex rolled his eyes. "Wolf, where's Snake? He might be needed."

"Probably still sleeping. Guess I should go wake him." As Wolf trudged over to the adjoining room, he muttered, "Three in the morning. It's three in the bloody morning."

The MI6 agent went to fetch the first-aid kit tucked in the bathroom and Alex put a hand up to his cheek remembering the long scratch, courtesy of the Russian sniper, as it came back sticky with his blood. The rush of adrenaline was starting to fade, leaving his fingers trembling and an acute sense that the room was spinning around him.

Fox returned with a white plastic box in hand, the familiar red cross emblazoned across both sides. "You don't look so good," he noted. "Sit down and I can patch you up."

"It's fine. I'll get blood all over the cushions, and that never comes out of fabric," he waved his fellow MI6 agent off.

"It's just a scratch, Ale-Cub." Fox was also mentally repeatedly whacking himself upside the head for slipping up and forgetting the codename again. "And this apartment has been through worse than a couple stains."

Alex stared down at the front of his jacket. The only trace of the bullet's path was a hole no bigger than his thumbnail. None of the blood had been able to seep through his Kevlar. "Yeah, about that. Those Russians I was looking into? Well, they had a sniper."

"It's the _mafia_," Fox stressed. "Of _course_ they have a sni-" He cut himself off as he noticed the small hole that had drawn Alex's notice previously. "Chikusho*, Snake get in here now!" Alex felt himself falling as his knee gave out. Fox grabbed him before he could hit the floor and pulled him over the couch. He peeled back the wet and dirty running jacket that the boy had been wearing for the last week as gently as he could, but there was still a small hiss of pain as it pulled the wound.

Snake raced into the room, now fully awake, with Wolf not far behind him and Eagle stumbling sleepily behind them both. "What is it?" the medic of the group demanded.

"I'm going to need help," he told Snake, "and scissors."

"Can't ge' it off wit scissors," Alex slurred through the haze of pain. "Shir' made of Kevlar."

Abandoning the scissors he had grabbed, Snake took one look at the hole in his shirt and declared, "This is gonna hurt." Before Alex had time to realize what he'd said, his shirt had been yanked smoothly off and he let out a short yelp, his vision going white. In moments, Snake had pushed a handful of gauze into the bullet wound to keep the bleeding under control. "Wolf, the tranq," he commanded calmly, not even looking up. The needle was pressed into his hand and he swiftly ejected the tranquilizer into the boy's neck, rendering him unconscious almost instantly.

His attention moved quickly to the swollen hole in his patient's chest. Despite the heavy bleeding and the grime covering his skin from weeks on the street, there were no immediate signs of infection. Using the thin scissors he had previously abandoned and a spoon, he deftly extracted the bullet without causing further injury. With the bullet out, he could see the inside of the wound. No major arteries or veins had been nicked, and it had failed to do more than barely graze the bone.

Snake let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding when he realized that while the wound looked messy, there would be no further complications.

Fox and Eagle had settled into chairs beside the couch, fidgeting as the medic stitched the hole carefully shut, but Wolf continued to pace. All of them were angered that someone so young, someone they _knew_ and had trained with, had been shot. Neither Wolf nor Snake had missed the scar marring the spot barely above his heart, nor had they missed the implications of it.

"Fox," Wolf boomed, and the slight MI6 operative jumped. "Yeah?"

"You've got some explaining to do. How'd MI6 get a teenage operative? Is this why Cub trained with us?"

Fox's eye twitched. "Do I really need to tell you that it's classified?" But he simultaneously sighed in defeat. "Personally, I'd like to know that too, but he won't tell me and my clearance isn't half of what it has to be to read his file. I've only been on a handful of missions with him, the first being while I was down in Australia, and every time we meet, I only get more questions."

"How'd he wind up on the other side of the world?"

"No clue. Truthfully, I saw him in Bangkok first and then he was with ASIS, not MI6, for that one. Though," he looked thoughtful, "there had been a rumor around base that he had fallen in from space."

Wolf was downright frustrated with the lack of information. "So Point Blanc wasn't his last operation."

"Wasn't his first either," Eagle piped up. Everyone in the room, including Snake, turned to him in disbelief. Unperturbed by the shift in attention, he continued, "Remember when they outsourced me to M-Unit for that incident with the Prime Minister?"

"Yeah," Wolf commented. "You wouldn't shut up about having more fun with them in that one week than in a year with us."

"It's true, but anyway that shooter we had to cover up, the one that burst through the ceiling, looked exactly like Cub did when he left Brecon Beacons _and_ he had MI6 clearance higher than I've ever heard of someone having. No other teenagers I know of even work for MI6 anyway."

An awkward silence filled the room before Wolf snapped at no one in particular, "What do those bastards at MI6 think they're playing at? He can't be eighteen!"

"Fifteen," Fox whispered. "He told me when he turned fifteen two months ago."

The soldier stormed into the adjoining room where they'd set up their sleeping quarters to let off steam and Eagle bounced after him saying, "I'll make sure he doesn't kill anyone or break anything."

Snake solemnly turned his attention fully back to Cub as he knotted off the triple layer of stitches and layered thick bandages across and around his shoulder to keep the stitches from getting pulled.

"When should the tranquilizer wear off?" Fox asked quietly.

The medic stood up and popped his back, his work completed. "Not long. It was meant to be strong, not lasting." He paused before asking Fox to get the IV from where it had been stored under the sink. "I'm going to set up a morphine drip just in case. If I knew his blood type, I'd get him a transfusion just in case, but it's too dangerous to take a wild guess." No sooner had he asked that Fox was gone and back. The IV was fed into the crook of his left elbow, the right still tightly clasping the gun he refused to drop even while unconscious. The spy also found some an extra pillow and blankets from a closet in the bathroom to keep Alex comfortable.

Less than an hour later, the teenage spy was stirring. Before he was even fully conscious, he had already begun assessing his surroundings, determining all possible entrances and exits, potential weapons, and noted both Snake and Fox as allies. Recovering from the haze of the tranq, he sat up slowly, noting the painkillers that made him feel both numb and light running in his system. "How bad?"

"If these were different circumstances," Snake spoke up, "we'd have you in the nearest hospital. You could use a transfusion and liquids, and that morphine won't last more than a day, plus or minus a couple hours. Fox, however, insisted that you wouldn't be here unless it was bad and thought a hospital would be too dangerous."

"Thanks, both of you. Fox is right about this. There was an unfortunate incident while I was in Russia, and since then these damned assassins won't get off my back. Most of them have been put permanently out of play," Snake flinched at how easily he was able to say this, "but at least a half dozen of them are just too determined to get easily shaken off. One of them in particular has likely been broadcasting my position to the rest since I left Moscow. He's going to catch up with me at some point, and probably soon."

"You need back-up," Fox paraphrased.

Alex deliberated before speaking, "No. I need sleep. Between these two," he nodded to the Sig Sauer still in his hand and the distinct outline of the Colt Magnum** strapped to his ankle, "I have plenty of ammo. Karov's men have been practically on top of me since his assassination and I can't remember when I slept last. Just give me some time to rest, and I'll be back out in the field tomorrow." The spy yawned deeply.

"Not if I have anything to do with this," Snake spoke up angrily. "That shoulder is going to keep you in bed for at least two weeks."

"Heh," he snorted. "That's what the doctors try to tell me every time. I doubt it's going to work this time either, Snake." He rubbed at his shoulder, though, as if he agreed with the medic. "By tomorrow, I'll need a new safe house whether I want to move or not. Until then," Alex fell back against the pillow and closed his eyes, "tell me if anything happens."

In moments he was sleeping again, the Colt loosely in his hand and facing the doorway. Eagle appeared in the doorway, the sounds of Wolf's swearing having calmed to angry muttering. "Is he always this difficult?" he asked Fox.

A disbelieving look appeared on his face. "Cub's actually being reasonable today. Most days, he's a trillion times worse!"

The two SAS men sighed.

"But if what he says is true, then we should all be on our toes," Wolf growled from where he now stood behind Eagle. "We need to get ready for company, boys."

* * *

A/N: This is my first story, so even if you think it sucked...REVIEW!

*_Chikusho _is Japanese for _damn it_, or a rough translation. Not my first language, so sorry bout that.

** Yes, I know that the Colt is sort of an old model, but the Sig and Colt are personally my favorite firearms and they have a helluva kick to them.


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2 of _Safehouse_. The whole series will be completed either tomorrow or Sunday, depending on my schedule this weekend. Thanks and R&R! ~ Samayou Tamashi

* * *

Light had just started to leak over the horizon, but it wouldn't be fully morning for another hour.

Wolf sat next to the only window in the flat, Ben and Eagle on opposite sides of the door, and Snake beside Alex, measuring his heart-rate. "It's too fast," he muttered half to himself, and Fox turned around.

"How much too fast?"

"When you go to sleep, the heartbeats should slow down along with the breathing." With a frown, he continued, "It's…it's almost like he's still conscious."

Fox relaxed. "Oh, that's nothing." At the medic's confusion, he clarified further. "We're spies, remember? At the slightest sound we need to be alert. Until the mission's over, he doesn't really sleep. It's more like meditation or yoga-relaxes the body and senses, but leaves the mind awake."* With a smirk, he added, "Watch."

The MI6 operative stood up and walked until he was half a meter from the couch. At that point, Alex's hand shot up to press his Sig to Fox's temple, the trigger pressed halfway down before Fox wrapped a hand lightly around his wrist.

There was a short hesitation in which K-Unit was sure that their former member was about to get killed by friendly fire, but slowly Alex released his grip on the trigger and relaxed his arm back down to his side.

"What the _hell_ was that?" Wolf demanded.

Snake, who had still had still left his hand on Alex's other wrist while measuring his pulse, spoke up, "He never woke up. His heart rate didn't change or even stutter."

Even Fox, who had been sure of the result, had felt a tinge of anxiety at the speed of the reaction. "Nerves. He tends to react violently when people get too close and he doesn't know their intentions. Though admittedly, that was twice as fast as I remembered," he added softly to the end. "We agreed that it would be dangerous if I tried to wake him up and he wound up killing me before realizing who I was, so I taught him how to relax subconsciously. If someone wraps their hand gently around his wrist, it means there's no danger."

"So why didn't he shoot me when I checked his pulse?" asked Snake.

"You've got a hand on his wrist," the medic looked down to confirm that, "so he assumes you're an ally." Eagle, who had taken a step forward when Alex had lifted the gun to his head, took a quick step backwards again.

From where he had remained sitting by the window, Wolf tensed as a figure dressed in a long trench coat despite the unusually sunny weather purposely strolled towards the entrance of the building. "Time to end the twenty questions. I see at least one." He double-checked that his magazine was fully loaded and disengaged the safety on the Walther P99QA as Fox checked over his shoulder to the view. "And there's another one," he commented calmly, pointing to the barely visible form keeping to the shadows of another building.

"Cub wasn't certain on the number, but he was sure there were at least six on his tail. Obviously, we're going to move on assumptions that there are more," Wolf informed Eagle, who looked downright evil with the Baretta Storm** he'd gotten from a friend living in the States and two flash-bangs readied in his left hand. The unit leader wasn't even sure how, but the man was never without a handful of stun grenades stashed somewhere.

The soldier grinned cheerfully. "Always do, Wolf. The real question is how far they can get before being overwhelmed by my sheer awesomeness."

Covering his laugh with a cough, Fox rolled his eyes. "I thought I told you guys that he was not to come in contact with any form of caffeine."

"It wasn't me, I swear. He's naturally this hyper, and you haven't seen him on a sugar rush yet. Horrifying." The two shuddered at the mere thought.

Eagle pouted but couldn't keep the smile from his eyes. At the sound of soft footsteps in the hallway, he froze before pulling the clip from the first flash-bang, opening the door, tossing it out, and slamming the door shut again. He plugged his ears and called to the rest to follow suit. The sudden sound, not to mention the blinding flash, dazed two of them. The third one almost made it to the door before Eagle re-opened the door and knocked him over the head with the butt of his handgun.

Seeing the body slump to the floor with a dull thud, Fox muttered, "There goes the welcoming committee."

"Please tell me more are coming," Eagle begged, aiming his Bambi eyes at Fox, "because I still have more flash-bangs and I never get to use the flash-bangs."

"Keep your attention on the door," Wolf barked at him, just as Fox shot at the assassin attempting to open the window while the unit leader was distracted. He spun around at the sudden gunfire before nodding at his teammate in appreciation.

"I take that as a yes?"

"Pay attention!" they both yelled.

With the MI6 agent and Wolf aiming at opposite entrances, and Eagle ready with another stun grenade in his hand, there was a dead silence. Snake suddenly broke the quiet. "I don't think the air duct should make that much noise."

Fox quickly switched his aim but too late as a bullet scraped past his left ear, burying itself in the far wall and sending him stumbling back. A short man dressed entirely in black dropped from the now-open vent, rolling as he hit the floor and evading the short bursts of fire Wolf and Eagle sent at him. Behind him, Snake had stepped away from Alex to pull a throwing knife from its sheath on his waist and send it spinning at the assassin, but with a quick turn, it only sliced his arm. He sent two shots at Wolf, who stumbled and fell clutching his chest, another at Eagle, catching him in the upper arm, and the last one grazed Snake's head, knocking him out.

The assassin paused, Fox moving silently to duck into the shadows by the doorway as he aimed for a fatality. Even as he shot, the assassin seemed to blur as he dropped to avoid the bullet and set back return fire. Fox fell back against the wall, head spinning and chest painfully bruised. All of them were wearing body armor beneath their shirts, but the man didn't need to be alerted to this fact. Getting up would only make him take head shots.

Quietly, as the assassin turned to Alex, he picked up his M1911 from where it had dropped and was about to pull the trigger when the silent man suddenly spoke up, catching him off-guard. Alex had slept through the fight, whether it was the morphine, his meditation, or a mix of both, and even now he didn't stir as the assassin addressed him.

"Rider, you've killed two of the Russian mafia's highest leaders in their own homes, our liaison to them, and three of our own executive board."*** K-Unit, including Snake who was slowly watching the room stop spinning, stared on in shock, forgetting their own injuries. At barely fifteen, Alex had taken out six of the world's most dangerous people _and_ lived. Fox realized that he had only seen a small part of his sometimes-partner's job, and understood why MI6 spoke of him as _the_ best. "SCORPIA sends a message. 'We never forgive, and you have not been forgotten.'" From a sheath on his leg, he pulled out a long dagger with a black scorpion emblazoned on one side and stepped forward, intending to hit where their sniper had so narrowly missed.

Fox regained control of his thoughts and once more aimed for a head-shot but Alex beat him to the kill.

His fatal mistake had been not using his gun to end it neatly. The dagger wasn't even a foot above him when Alex used his gun to ensnare the assassin's wrist. In a quick snap, learned ironically from the same people who were now trying desperately to kill him, he broke the ulna and radius simultaneously, the dagger flying from the now-useless hand to stick perfectly straight up in the floor at his feet. Alex flicked his ring finger out to spin the gun back into position. He shot twice, the first a little to the left but the last catching him above his eye.

Within less than ten seconds, the assassin had been killed. Mercifully, his mind never had the chance to register the painfully broken bones.

Even as the man collapsed to the floor, Alex never relaxed his hold on the Sig, his finger hesitating by the trigger as if awaiting the next target.

Recovering first from the sudden flash of events, Fox shakily stood up and put a finger on his lips for silence from K-Unit. He left his gun on the floor and slowly stumbled to kneel beside the couch, wrapping the hand not holding his chest around the small wrist. "Relax," he whispered.

Eventually, he did.

* * *

Fox and K-Unit worried when Alex continued to sleep the entire day, or 'meditate' as Fox put it. Snake, after bandaging his own head, fixed up Eagle's arm as the soldier complained that he'd never gotten to use the rest of his stash and got an ice pack for Wolf. The man had two ugly bruises where the bullets had been deflected, but they still hurt like hell. Fox had come out with a possible cracked rib, but he insisted that he didn't want to be hospitalized until Alex woke.

The body was taken out, along with the one that Fox had shot, by a group of MI6 agents. All traces of the fight, down to the bullet holes and scuffed carpet, were fixed up and made to look as if that morning had never happened. When asked, no one mentioned what had happened to the three men Eagle had conked out in the hallway, though it was assumed that MI6 had either taken them in for interrogation or killed them. Both theories were popular between the four of them.

To satisfy the rest of K-Unit, Snake checked Alex's breathing and pulse (while nervously holding his wrist the entire time) assuring them that he wasn't comatose. The only outward signs of life were his fingers subtly shifting on the trigger, adjusting to maintain a steady grip and ready to shoot again at any moment.

* * *

Over six hours later, at the same time he had arrived early the previous morning, he opened his eyes, rubbing the sleep from them and, after a short hesitation, holstering the Sig at his waist. After checking the time on his watch to make sure he had rested no longer than the allotted twenty-four hours, he sat up on his right elbow to take careful note of the changes in his surroundings, however small. The floor had been both scrubbed and vacuumed thoroughly. In two, no three spots, the carpet didn't match the rest of the room—likely a stain-remover. When he had holstered the Sig it had been marginally lighter. Likely, one bullet was missing from the chamber.

Eagle was in a chair by the door with one arm bandaged and wrapped up in a sling and loudly snoring. Wolf appeared to have been reading the file in his lap but, like the other soldier, had succumbed to sleep. Fox, Alex noticed, had fallen asleep on the floor beside the couch he was lying on. Even sleeping, his hand was still wrapped around Alex's wrist. The teenager had to give a small smile at that. It must have been a long day.

Feeling the new wrap on his shoulder and the fresh bag of morphine in his system, he momentarily relaxed back into the pillow. The weariness hadn't faded and through the painkillers his shoulder throbbed, but the day-long reprieve had been enough to make it easier.

With a glance in the direction of Snake's retreating footsteps, he tossed on a loose t-shirt lying on the floor after pulling the IV from his elbow and lightly removing Fox's hand without disturbing him. He retrieved his jacket from where it had been tossed haphazardly on the arm of the couch and pulled a packet of black powder from one of the pockets hidden inside the left sleeve. When he rubbed pinches of it into his sandy-blond hair, the small particles bonded with the roots and his scalp, darkening his hair to a dark brown as if it had always been that way. It wouldn't come out unless he used one of Smither's shampoos to remove it. A pair of contacts from a similar pocket in the right sleeve faded his dark brown eyes to soft amber.

Snake returned to the room to see a completely different person, only knowing it was him by the bandage across his cheek and the way he was carefully holding his shoulder. Alex held a finger up to his lips, not wanting to disturb the sleeping men.

"You shouldn't be up yet," the medic glared, but made sure he spoke quietly.

The spy shrugged with his good arm. "I've been in the field for over three weeks now. Blunt is going to want a report. Besides, information could have leaked on this safehouse and I'm still not up for a full out fight."

Snake opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again. "Let it heal," he finally decided and Alex nodded with an understanding expression.

"I'll try, but that's all I can promise. Work… Well, you know." Moving his injured shoulder slowly, he managed to ease the jacket on. Before he let his fingers touch the door knob, however, he spun back around to meet Snake's eyes. "Tell the guys thanks for everything. If any of you ever needs help, just tell anyone connected to the police that you're friends of the current Rider and he owes you a huge one."

Shaking his head, Snake held out a hand. "We never really did get introduction did we? Jake O'Reilly." Alex grinned as he nodded and shook the offered hand. "Rider. Alex Rider." The medic had to snort at his joke, but he was serious again.

"And if you need SAS behind you, just ask Fox and he'll point the way."

"I know. Thanks again, and I hope someday we can just sit down and talk." Both of them sighed at the impossibility of that in the near future. "Until then, if you look carefully, I think we'll meet again," he winked. Snake blinked, and he was gone.

"Damn. How _does_ he do that?"

* * *

A/N: Thanks for all the review! I checked my email when I got home and almost had a heart-attack at all the alerts. I responded to all the reviews I could, but to those anonymous reviews: Thanks sooo much! **The sequel/epilogue will be added as Part 3 and should be up either later today or sometime tomorrow depending on how much time I have.**

*This type of meditation, and his reaction to being touched, can really happen. You can close off all your senses and 'meditate' while still responding subconsciously to touches and movements. It takes awhile to master, but it IS possible and quite relaxing.

**Another favorite gun, and personally one of the easiest to use (with the exception of the Walther P99 that SAS troops _really do _use in combat), the Beretta Px4 Storm Subcompact F has minimal recoil and works well in relatively close spaces.

***For those of you who were confused, this is about six months after Crocodile Tears. He's been getting around, and by the mafia, I mean THE mafia (located and working out of Russia).

To some of the individual anonymous reviews I got, there were two in particular that I was _so _grateful for. They noted pieces that were off, and I can explain those. Sorta...

**_Ambrele_**: The Sig Sauer is made to be accurate, and I think that I exaggerated the distance he was shooting from. My uncle and cousin are both snipers, and they assured me it is a fairly simple shot despite how difficult it sounds. Thanks for telling me, and its alright that your anonymous. Keep reviewing!

**_Anonymous_**: (The one with the uber-long review) I have something to explain. I...heh...don't live in England. I'll gratefully move this over to the States if it makes more sense, because I have only been in Europe a half-dozen times and have no knowledge of how things are different. The part about Ben speaking in Japanese was entirely on accident and I hadn't caught it until right before publishing. I have this awful habit of switching languages and not noticing it. When my sister pointed it out, I just quickly left a note at the bottom for translation. If I do it again, tell me and I'll either fix it or make another note. Your review was so helpful, please keep telling me when I miss something!


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3 and the epilogue of _Safehouse_. Hope you like the ending! As always, R&R. ~ SamayouTamashi

* * *

Two weeks later, Ben Daniels was in his office at the Royal and General catching up on all the wonderful paperwork that he had to complete after each mission. For every day he spent out on his 'illustrious' job, he wound up using a week to fill out, sign, and date all the individual documents thrown on to his desk. The operation had lasted a mere three days, with no complications whatsoever, but the paperwork seemed to tower up a good half a meter. Tossing the handful of finished papers in a second tray, he put his head in his hands, running through a list of reasons as to why he shouldn't burn the stack down to a pile of cinders.

As he stood up to grab his fourth cup of caffeine, Ben could've sworn that he saw a glimpse of Alex's familiar face flash by his window. Peering down the hallway outside his office, the teenager turned to meet his curious glance. Ben deflated as he realized that, first, this teenager was much older. Likely somewhere around nineteen or twenty, not fifteen. Second, he was of Russian or Nordic descent with nearly platinum blond hair, skin too pale to be called fair, piercing arctic blue eyes, the two small diamond studs in his left ear, and the thick sweater and fur boots made for a place much colder than England. He held his head high, as if he was too good for the rest of the world, but when he noticed the MI6 agent's confusion, the teen let the flash of a smile cross his face, nodded, and continued down the hall in the direction of Blunt's office.

Ben chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip as the Russian teenager turned a corner. He hadn't seen or worked with Alex since the incident with the assassins, nor had he found him in the patient list at St. Dominic's, which is where he should have been with his shoulder.

For a brief moment, he had assumed that the kid was one of the other agent's sons, or maybe related to a visiting diplomat. In a flash of memory, however, he recalled Snake's repetition of their conversation prior to his sudden departure: "…and if you look carefully, I think we'll meet again." The nod and flicker of warmth behind the cold eyes became stunningly obvious.

Alex had returned.

* * *

Wolf drained the last of his beer later that same week in K-Unit's temporary Egyptian post. They'd been relocated at the last minute when worries of a terrorist cell in Aswan had been brought up by worried local merchants. Until this 'terrorist cell' was located, K-Unit would be stuck in the middle of the desert with nothing to do.

Eagle was currently attempting to catch Falcon, Fox's replacement and their languages expert, cheating at cards. The only reason he was so irritated was because he was also cheating, but still lacked the ability to catch up with their new member's twenty-three consecutive wins. "How _are_ you doing that?" he angrily demanded, throwing down his straight flush. Falcon, of course, had a _royal_ straight flush. On the piece of paper beside him, he marked down another win in his favor.

"I just drew the cards," he replied innocently, but fooling no one. Master of cheating he might be, but deception was a whole other thing.

Snake looked up from his book at the pair, then at the mirror placed conveniently behind his losing teammate, and again at the second empty box of playing cards on the floor. He gave a disbelieving look at Falcon. "He hasn't figured it out yet?"

Falcon shuffled the deck, deftly placing the extra cards into the second deck in his lap. "Realized what?"

Shaking his head, the medic went back to his book, thoroughly disappointed by the apparent intelligence in his companions. "I'm stuck in the desert with children."

"We should get paid extra," Wolf agreed whole-heartedly.

A young Egyptian popped his head in the tent and everyone looked up from their previous tasks. His white robe had been dirtied and faded from long exposure to both sun and sand. Only his dark ebony skin and hood had protected him from intense sunburn. When he noticed their eyes, he timidly spoke up, "**بالله****عليك****التحدث****بالعربية**?"

Everyone turned to their translator. Falcon hesitated, but replied back in Egyptian Arabic. "**نا**."

"**المسئول**?"

"He wants to know who's in charge," came the English translation. The unit looked at Wolf.

"Ask him what he wants."

"**تريدونماذا**?"

The boy shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Instead of answering, he drew a long rolled-up scroll from within the folds of his robe. Parts of the top appeared to have been licked by flames and stains looking suspiciously like blood splattered a half-circle around the middle. He seemed to take no notice of either of these when he unrolled it, pinning it to the table previously used by them for cards with a pair of cups.

Across the parchment was a map scrawled by hand with small symbols marking individual landmarks. "What _is_ this?" Wolf demanded, and the Egyptian grew even more nervous. His eyes flickered over the room, looking at everything except the SAS men. "**القاعدة****الإرهابية****ستة****ونصف****كيلومتر****من****هنا**."

Falcon's eyes widened, and the rest of them turned to him. "He says that this is a map of the terrorist base six and a half kilometers here."

"How did you get this map?" Wolf asked, with an edge to his voice.

The boy looked like he might run, but he just scuffed his foot against the dusty floor. "**وجهت****له**."

"He drew it himself," Falcon breathed, looking even more intently at the spidery lines making up an almost flawless diagram.

When Wolf gave him a disbelieving look, he bent over the map to point out the small symbols in his broken and heavily accented English. "Camera," his finger hovered over the small triangles. "Watchers," he traced the dotted lines that crisscrossed every hallway, doorway and entrance. "Air holes," which Falcon clarified as the ventilation shafts, were traced out in fine grey pencil instead of black ink like the rest. As he pointed at the largest room in the complex, he rubbed a hand against his forehead. "Er…center. Important."

"The control room," Eagle guessed, and he nodded.

Wolf crossed his arms, content that when the SAS units went in that they wouldn't be going in blind. "How many weapons?"

At this, a small smirk seemed to come over the Egyptian's face, though the timid persona fell back on almost as fast as it went. He shook his head. "No."

The unit leader blinked, confused by his answer. "The group has no weapons, whatsoever?"

"No, no. Did. No longer had."

"Then, what happened to their weapons?" Eagle pushed. If they'd _had_ firearms or whatever, then where had they gone?

The Egyptian started to answer, but stopped and frowned, his eyebrows furrowed in thought. He spoke in Arabic again to Falcon, but the soldier looked even more confused than the boy did. "I can't figure out half the words. Must be a different dialect that I never learned."

When the boy noticed the holster at Snake's side, he gestured quickly at it. "Borrow?" The medic complied, but only with a nod from Wolf in agreement. "Here," he held it out and the Egyptian took it with an easy familiarity. Using one hand, he removed the ammunition clip and pointed to it.

"Something about their ammo?" Eagle guessed. A nod. He pointed to himself. "You took their ammo?" Another nod.

"And how in _hell_ did you manage to get a hold of every single scrap of their ammunition?" Wolf growled suspiciously.

Once more, the Egyptian boy could only shrug. "Words English hard."

While he was far from being convinced, something in those deep dark eyes made him trust that whatever it was he wasn't explaining was something he didn't need to know. "All right, let's get the other two units out and ready in the next ten minutes. See if Owl can copy this so that each unit has a copy when we go in." Eagle bounced happily out the door, looking for a water bucket to wake an unsuspecting S-Unit. Falcon followed him out, glancing curiously at the young Egyptian.

As the tent flap closed, the boy fished a canteen from a loop on his waist and drank thirstily, taking in as much water as he could without choking on it. He had obviously crossed the desert by foot and, as his hood fell back, he had the sunburns to show for it. Collapsing into one of the chairs, he held up the canteen. "Water?"

From the storage under his bunk, Snake pulled out one of the gallon containers filled with water for the unit. "Here," he showed the nervous boy how to open and close the tap attached to the bottom. As he was filling the canteen to the brink, Snake peered at a long pink line trailing from below his eye to a spot in the middle of his cheek. "How'd you get that?" The boy closed the tap and capped his canteen, clipping it back on to his waist. In response to Snake's question, he pointed to the gun he'd laid back on the table. His fingers lightly traced the fading scar, and a sort-of tired fell over his face.

In one swift move, the weariness was covered up again and the Egyptian slipped from his chair to stand by the flap. He nodded at them, muttering a quiet thanks in his Arabic-tinged English, and left.

Wolf watched the sudden departure with a tingle of recognition. "Was it just me or did that seem-"

"Familiar? Yeah, but how?"

"I…I don't know," he sighed.

Wolf left the tent, Snake not long behind him, with the map in hand to take to Owl. He ran through the simplest plan imaginable in his mind. The simpler, the better.

From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a small figure vanishing behind a pair of tents and into the desert from whence he came. Cub's words seemed to come to mind: "…and if you look carefully, I think we'll meet again."

Suddenly, the scar on his face, the familiar eyes behind the contacts, and the weariness he had glimpsed all came together in one neat package.

Cub had returned.

* * *

A/N: The end has come way too soon, and I hate to leave, but I hope you liked my short little ending.

Many thanks to the twenty-nine reviews in my first two chapters, the people who added this story to their alerts, and the nearly thousand that read my story. I have an idea on a sequel to _Safehouse_ that I'm going to call _Favor_. If you like the idea, send me some sort of message. The more support I have, the likelier I'll start work on building a plot line.

Thanks a trillion for all the awesome comments, and all the ones to come. Hope you liked it, because I sure as hell enjoyed the ride. ~ SamayouTamashi


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